We are the inventors of a device which we have named the Ion Collider.TM. on which we filed patent application Ser. No. 08/350,849 in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Dec. 7, 1994 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,482,629. The Ion Collider was developed and has been successfully used to improve the process of separating particles entrained in a liquid from the liquid.
For example, when water containing oil particles is allowed to settle in a tank and then the layer of oil decanted off, the decanted oil contains about 15 percent water and the remaining water contains about 50 parts oil per one million parts water. However, when the water containing oil particles was treated in our Ion Collider prior to entering the settling tank, the decanted oil contained less than one percent water and the remaining water contained about 10 parts oil per billion parts water.
Based upon tests recently conducted, we have found a new use for our Ion Collider. When certain liquids and gases are treated in our Ion Collider, the treated liquid or gas exhibits economically beneficial changes in its physical characteristics.
As an example of a change in the physical characteristics of a liquid treated in our Ion Collider, water run through the Ion Collider requires 15 percent less energy to convert a given volume of treated water to steam than it does to convert the same volume of untreated water to steam. Moreover, the hardness of the treated water will be measurably reduced.
While we are not nuclear physicists, we believe the changes we have observed in a number of Ion Collider-treated liquids and gases results from ionization, i.e., electrical charging, of a significant number of the molecules of the treated liquid or gas.